“Well, fuck.” Nicholas rested his head against hers, still breathing raggedly.
“Or not.”
Nicholas groaned. “Not funny. This might be easier if I could stop touching you, but I can’t.” His fingers lightly traced the lace on her bra, skimming over the swells at the top of the cups before he started dropping kisses on her overheated skin. “I’m glad you’re not a ‘ho-bag,’ Jen, but it’s damned inconvenient right now.” His head raised suddenly, hope rising in his eyes. “What about Travis?”
Jena’s brain was still fuzzy. “Yeah, Travis was a man-ho, but not since Leisa…”
He pulled her off her feet, walking toward the bedroom. “Good to know. Now, what would a ‘man-ho’—where the hell do you come up with these things?—most likely keep handy?”
Light dawned. “I hope you’re right. Let me down.”
He lowered her feet to the floor, and she backed down the hall toward Travis’s room, grinning, as Nick started to unbutton his jeans and backed into her room, eyes fixed on her.
She rushed into Travis’s room, mentally apologizing to him for ignoring his advice to stay out of bed with Nick as much as for invading his room, and praying that he still kept a stash of condoms. She shouldn’t have worried. One whole drawer of his nightstand was stuffed full of a wide variety of protection. Grabbing a handful, Jena almost skipped back to her room to find Nicholas stretched out on her bed, hands behind his head.
His eyes widened, and he started to laugh when he saw the array in her hand. “Wow. I don’t think I can live up to that kind of expectation.”
“Shut up.” She tossed them on the nightstand and stretched out beside him, running her hand lightly over his chest and stomach and playing with the line of hair that began below his belly button. He inhaled sharply, hips rising off the bed, seeking contact with her hand. Jena slowly popped the buttons on his jeans open.
“Tease.”
She smiled. “It’s not teasing when you plan to follow through.” She leaned over him to kiss him lightly on the forehead and then pressed soft kisses all over his face. Pushing the fabric of his jeans to the sides, she slipped her hand inside as she kissed his chest. Nicholas moaned, sending shivers down her spine. He put his hand over hers and let out a shaky laugh.
“Do you want me to stop, Nicholas?”
“Absolutely. Never touch me again. Dork.” He shook his head and rolled toward Jena, rubbing her hand against him. “You’re just lucky that I took care of business in the shower this morning, or I couldn’t have lasted this long.”
He drew back as Jena squeaked, “What?”
Her mind immediately flashed to her dream: the bracing arm. The intense look on his face as the water dripped from his hair and lips…She moaned and slid her hand farther inside his jeans to lightly scratch his skin.
“Christ, Jena—” he gasped, and started tugging at her jeans. “I need you now.”
Jena giggled, and his head shot up from where he was nuzzling her breasts as his hands pushed impatiently at the heavy denim. “Patience, grasshopper,” she said. “This would be a lot easier if I didn’t have shoes on.”
He looked down and chuckled, flopping over on his back with an arm over his eyes.
“Carry on with the de-shoeing.”
Jena sat up, still snickering, and quickly untied her sneakers, toeing them off onto the floor and kicking her jeans the rest of the way off before she lay down. “All systems are go, captain.” She closed her eyes.
“Open your eyes, please,” Nicholas said. Jena looked into his suddenly solemn eyes. He touched her face hesitantly. “Thank you for giving me a chance to love you better.”
She nodded. She traced the lines of his waist and hips and thighs before she hooked his jeans with her toes and pushed them the rest of the way down and off. “Show me, Nicholas. Show me you love me.”
They started slowly, with soft touches and laughter, taking the time to appreciate the curves and planes of the bodies they’d known so intimately and loved so completely. Soon, though, breathing roughened as touches became caresses on skin damp with sweat, hands grasping and sliding. Whispers turned to moans; words were lost and the only the sounds were skin on skin and unsteady gasps of pleasure.
Jena felt her eyes closing as she concentrated on the sensation of being filled, feeling Nick tremble above her as his movements became fast, almost frantic.
“Jena…” he gasped. “I can’t…” He froze, face twisted and head arched back as he cried out his pleasure.
She traced gentle fingers over the tendons in his neck as they stood out in sharp relief before he buried his face in the hair at the crook of her neck and lay shaking over her. “I’m sorry…I couldn’t wait…”
Jena stroked the hair at the nape of his neck until he relaxed. “There’ll be other times,” she whispered soothingly.
“Promise?”
She nodded solemnly.
After a minute, Nicholas shifted to lie next to her, pulling her half over him and holding her tightly. “I love you,” he said, kissing her hair. “Please don’t leave me again.”
Jena moved until she could see his face. The vulnerability in his eyes was sobering. She was beginning to realize how frightening it must be for him to leave himself so open. Her feelings had always been so close to the surface that a reaction like his had never occurred to her before. She smoothed the sweaty hair off of Nick’s forehead, and he closed his eyes with a smile.
“I’m not going anywhere. I love you. That won’t change.” Laying her head on his shoulder, Jena placed her hand in the middle of his chest where she could feel his heartbeat just starting to slow.
Nicholas put his free hand over hers on his chest. “This is what I need. I thought about this every night when I tried to sleep. I missed your hand right here; I don’t sleep well without it.”
Jena hesitated to ruin the moment with a difficult topic, but there were things that needed to be discussed. “You haven’t been sleeping much at all, according to Conor. Or eating.” She stroked his chest. “I’m sorry, Nicholas. I should have—”
He jiggled her head on his shoulder sharply. “Don’t. We both could have done things differently. It’s over now.” He dropped another kiss on her head and tightened his arm around her.
Now for the topic she really didn’t want to approach. “Nicholas?”
“Yes?” He sounded wary.
“What happened with your parents? I heard that it was big ugly.” Jena leaned on her elbow so she could see his face.
Nicholas pulled a long hank of hair over her shoulder and rubbed it on his cheek. “Travis?” She nodded, waiting. “I actually don’t remember a lot of what was said. I was pretty upset.” His eyes flashed to hers, and he swallowed. She nodded again. “The upshot was that I’m done with them, my dad specifically. If he wants me to choose, I will. And I did.” He dropped her hair and rested his hand on hers again, trying on a smile that didn’t stretch to his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Jena whispered. It seemed like such an insignificant thing to say.
Nicholas laced his fingers through the hair at the back of her head and kissed her lingeringly. “I’m not,” he said when he finally released her lips and formed a real smile. He eased them both onto their sides, wrapping his arm around her. “The good news is that school was all paid for at the beginning of this year. I’ll probably have to get a job next year, but maybe I can get something at the hospital.” He sighed. “Then I wouldn’t have to pay rent at all, since I practically live there now.” He shifted a little, seeming to be making a decision. “Jena…I was going to ask you that night if you’d consider staying with me more often. I can’t handle only seeing you every week or two.” He pulled her more tightly against him. “I need you right here. I want to go to sleep and wake up with you every day. I don’t think I ever told you that, but I’ve been thinking it for months.” He squeezed her again. “I’ve been thinking a lot of things that I was too scared to say.”
Jena fe
lt a tightness in her chest as she kissed him, worried about screwing up what they already had by moving too quickly. “Me, too. I can’t promise you every night, but how about we stay together as often as we can?” Her stomach growled loudly, and Nicholas chuckled.
“The beast speaks.” He started to rise, and she grabbed his arm.
“Can you stay for the rest of the weekend? I’d like that.”
“Yep. I was advised to take this weekend off and think about whether I really wanted to come back, actually. Apparently I haven’t had my mind on the job lately.” He stood up and stretched, laughing as she dropped her eyes.
“Nicholas, I’m so—”
He pulled Jena out of the bed and kissed her hard. “Nope. No more sorry. I want to eat, and sleep, and put a huge dent in your sin pile before Monday morning.” He nodded toward the heap of assorted condoms on the nightstand and waggled his eyebrows. “Can your stomach wait for a shower?”
Jena pushed Nicholas toward the bathroom.
The hell with dinner.
Chapter Seventeen
“CRAP!” NICHOLAS MUTTERED between clenched teeth as he stumbled over Conor’s backpack and banged into the coffee table for the millionth time since school started. He toyed with the idea of throwing the damn thing against Conor’s door, but a fight with him at three a.m. didn’t sound like the best use of the few hours of sleep he could snag before morning rounds.
He pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it into the overflowing laundry hamper by the bathroom door. Yet another thing that had been left undone. Shaking his head and yawning, Nick turned and let out a strangled squawk when he saw a shape in the hall.
“Shut the hell up, Dickolas!” Conor growled in a low voice as he stepped into the light. “You’ll wake…whatever her name is…from statistics class.”
“Nice, Con. They don’t even have names now?” Nick whispered, stepping out of his slacks and dropping them into the hamper as well.
Conor stifled a yawn with the back of his hand. “Sure they do. I just don’t always immediately remember what they are.”
Nick swallowed back a laugh. “Whore. What are you doing out here?”
“I fell asleep on the couch studying for a damned Calculus test. Someone woke me up.” Conor shot Nick the evil eye.
“Because I tripped on your damned backpack again.” Nicholas scratched his head and rubbed his neck.
Conor had the grace to look abashed. “Sorry about that. I know you’ve reminded me a million times.” He leaned against the wall, studying Nick. “Nice hair. Now you look completely insane instead of partially cracked. Have you eaten?”
Searching his memory, Nicholas vaguely remembered a sandwich sometime that day. He shrugged and turned toward his room.
Conor was clearly not impressed. Gesturing toward the kitchen with his head, he herded Nicholas in that direction. “You gotta eat something. C’mon.”
Nick sank into a kitchen chair as Conor opened the fridge and pulled out a covered container. After dishing out a portion of something, he set it to warm in the microwave and leaned against the counter to wait for it to finish heating.
Nick felt his eyes closing and rested his head against the wall. The quiet clunk of the dish Conor set before him woke him up.
“Eat this,” Con ordered, sitting down across from Nick and rubbing his stubbly face with both hands before training his eyes on his friend again. “Can that guy really do this to you? Keep you until whenever he wants to let you go? You were supposed to have been off at midnight, right?”
Nicholas nodded wearily, digging into the baked ziti. He would have sworn he wasn’t hungry, but the first bite brought the beast in his belly alive with a roar. “Yep. I’m his bitch until the end of this rotation.” Nick got up and poured a glass of milk, swallowing down half of it before sitting back down to finish his food. “This is really good, Con. Mind if I have more?”
Taking the plate, Conor refilled it with a smaller portion, warming it and setting the plate in front of Nick again. Nicholas quickly dug into the food. “Have you ever considered going to Call? I mean, being that he and your dad are tight and all, maybe—”
Nick suddenly lost his appetite. He flashed Conor a warning glance. “Don’t even go there, Conor. I have never asked for favors based on my father, and I don’t intend to start now.” Nicholas pushed his plate away and finished the milk, standing to scrape the remains in the garbage and rinse the plate. When he turned, Conor was looking down at the table.
“Hey. Sorry for biting your head off. I’m a jerk.”
Conor smiled and nodded, rising from his chair and heading for his room.
“Thanks for feeding me,” Nick whispered.
Conor flapped his hand over his shoulder as he opened his own door. “Thank your girlfriend. Jena made dinner before she retreated to your room. Lucky SOB.”
Nick smiled at Conor, nodding.
Turning the doorknob as quietly as he could, Nicholas stepped into the room and shut the door. He slid between the sheets, feeling the sleep warmth radiating off of Jena’s body, and cursed himself for undressing before sitting in the cold kitchen to eat. Hoping he would warm quickly, he smoothed a strand of her hair that was resting on the pillow, and studied her sleeping face in the weak light coming in the window. It still felt like a tiny miracle that she would be warm and soft in his bed some nights when he came home. He never slept nearly as well on the nights she stayed at her apartment, no matter how tired he was.
Yawning, Nick turned on his side, away from Jena, so he wouldn’t be tempted to pull her close to his cool body. His eyes had drifted closed when he felt her arm twine around his waist and her hand rest on his chest.
“Mmmm…cold…” Jena murmured, and moved closer, resting her cheek on Nicholas’s back and twining her legs with his, molding her body around him. “Love you…” Nick could feel her soft exhalations against his skin, and counted them until he drifted off.
When the alarm went off at seven, he slapped at it at it until the noise finally died away with a groan.
“I think you just killed another one.” Jena’s mischievous voice came from next to him, and Nick opened one eye to see her lying on her side, head resting propped up on one hand while she gently combed through his hair with the other. “How many clocks is that since the term started?”
“Uhhh…” Nick tried to make the mental calculation. “Four? I think? Two the first couple of weeks of school and two in the last week. Did I really kill it?”
Jena laughed, shaking the clock. Nicholas could hear rattling. “Yep. I’m pretty sure it’s dead.”
“Crap.”
She kissed him on the forehead. “I’ll pick you up another one when I go to the store today. Do you need anything else? I noticed you’re almost out of toothpaste.” She drifted into thought for a minute while Nicholas considered what else he could have her pick up. “Hey,” Jena nudged him. “Why no dead clocks in the middle there?”
He shifted his eyes to the bureau and shrugged, moving to rise from the bed, but Jena put a hand on his chest to hold him down. She turned his face gently toward her. “Nicholas?”
“I didn’t sleep much,” he finally admitted.
Jena lowered her mouth onto his and kissed him gently but thoroughly. Nick reached up to run his hands over her back. The slow twist in his stomach reminded him that it had been a couple of days since he’d held her like this, and he groaned as she drew back, smiling.
“That was nice; let’s do it again,” he said, trying to pull her back down.
She laughed as she resisted. “Nope. No time this morning. You jump in the shower, and I’ll get some breakfast together.” She scooted over to the edge of the bed and slipped on a pair of shorts.
“Join me?” Nicholas lay still for a minute, head propped on his curled arm, enjoying the view of her tangled hair trailing below her bum as she arced backward in a stretch, remembering how cool and soft it felt against his thighs…Now he really wanted her in the shower.
“Nice try.” Jena quickly whipped her hair into a ponytail and headed for the door. “You would definitely be late then.” She stopped in the doorway without turning around. “We need to talk about what happened, Nicholas,” she said quietly, “no matter how much you don’t want to. Come eat as soon as you’re finished in the bathroom.” She continued out the door, and Nick heard her greet Conor.
Well, hell.
Glancing at the clock again, Nicholas realized he only had about twenty-five minutes to get ready before he had to head out. Dragging into the bathroom, he showered quickly, thinking about what Jena said. He knew she’d wanted to discuss what happened in those weeks when he didn’t sleep for quite a while, but there wasn’t anything on this earth that he wanted to do less than think about the empty days and nights without even the sound of her voice, unless it was to relive that hell.
How was he supposed to talk about how he felt that night when the numbness wore off? He vaguely remembered calling his parents, and his dad trying to explain what he’d said to Sofia’s dad, but at that point Nick was out of control and screaming at him to go fuck himself. After that bit of excess, Nick only remembered trying to hold what was left together as Conor hovered over him, face grim. He still hadn’t spoken to either of his parents, though they had tried phoning several times. Caller ID made avoiding them easy.
The next morning, as Nicholas surveyed the wreckage in his room without remembering how it happened, it seemed clear that he had to leave Jena alone. The sorrow in her voice the night before stabbed at his heart. The last thing her light needed was to be eclipsed by his darkness, he thought…and a part of him wondered if that was still true.
Shaking off the memories as he finished shaving and knotted his tie, Nick shrugged into his jacket and entered the kitchen. Conor looked up from his breakfast with a smile, shooting his eyes toward Jena as she hummed at the counter, folding eggs and cheese into a tortilla. Pouring a travel mug of coffee, she turned and her face lit with a slow smile when she saw Nick. She stretched to kiss his jaw before setting the plate on the table.
Cocktails & Dreams Page 24